TPS #52–Do You Use These 3 Onboarding Automations?

Read Time: 3mins 52s

If there's one part of running a business that gets old fast, it's manually onboarding new clients and team members.

If you have a team or work with clients, you know what I mean.

Explaining the same things over and over. Answering common questions repeatedly. Sending a mountain of administrative reminders yourself.

It's a huge distraction that keeps you from higher-value work.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

After many iterations, I've crafted 3 rock-solid onboarding automations using Notion, Slack, and ChatGPT that easily save me 10+ hours every month.

(If not more)

Today, I’ll be going through the nitty-gritty of this process.

But, real quick, I just posted a new video on my YouTube.

If you want to learn how to build your own Prompt Library in Notion, check it out here :)

Now let’s begin.

The Never-Ending Chore of Manual Onboarding

Let me paint the all-too-familiar picture of traditional client onboarding...

You sign a new client. Cue a flurry of manual work:

  • Explaining your processes, sending resources, and answering questions

  • Personally sending messages about dates, meetings, etc.

  • Following up continuously to make sure nothing is falling through the cracks

It's not rocket science work. It's a repetitive administrative grind that quickly eats up your week.

Not to mention mentally taxing responding to the same questions over and over.

There had to be a better way...

Automation 1: Client Portals in Notion

After one too many nights locked in my inbox onboarding new clients, I decided to get organized.

I built out templatized client portals in Notion - centralized workspaces containing everything a new client needs in one spot:

  • Our agreed-upon project scope

  • Milestones timeline and key dates

  • Relevant documentation and resources

  • Direct contacts for their team

Now, before a client kicks off, I simply send them a link to their pre-made Notion portal. No more kicking up dirt trying to figure out what to do.

It literally takes me less than 30 seconds for me to set up their client portal.

And the best part is it provides a turnkey self-serve experience where clients have all the info handy.

Not to mention the massive amount of administrative work I’ll save.

Don’t know what your client portal needs?

Well, here are a couple of items I’ve included in mine:

•Client projects
•Timelines
•Documents
•Invoices
•Notes
•Meetings

Just to name a few.

I like to keep things as simple as they can possibly be.

Automation 2: AI Assistant Trained on Our SOPs

Even with client portals, there are always questions, but not always from clients.

Now it’s from the team.

“How do I send an email to so and so in this way?

“How do I log in to your LinkedIn?

And it goes on and on.

I couldn't afford client questions eating into my time anymore.

That's when I decided to leverage AI and train a ChatGPT assistant on our SOPs. Now my AI handles these frequent client questions instantly:

  • Accessing shared files? AI has the answers

  • Don’t know how to do a step in a certain process? AI knows

  • Can't remember who your main contact is? AI pulls up the right contact

And it’s never been easier to do.

I use a website called Joonbot (not affiliated).

All it takes is you selecting the Notion pages you want the AI trained on.

And if you are anything like me, you store all of your SOPs in Notion, so implementation has never been easier.

I’ve done TONS of looking around for the best tool & by this is the simplest & quickest.

Automation 3: New Notion Tasks to Slack

The final piece was automating reminders and follow-ups with my team directly in Notion.

I connected Slack workflows so that anytime I create a new onboarding task or milestone in my Notion system, it auto-pings clients or my team via Slack:

  • Kickoff meeting reminders 3 days before

  • Weekly check-in prompts

  • Tasks that get assigned

Now, I don’t worry about if my team saw a new task I assigned.

My system pings, and everyone knows what’s going on.

It's super simple to set up with the Native slack automation in Notion databases, as well as with make.com or pipedream.com if you want to get fancy.

Reclaim Your Time With Smarter Onboarding

After months of refining these 3 automations, my onboarding is now:

📌 Self-serve client portals providing 24/7 access to everything

📌 AI assistant handling all common questions quickly

📌 Automatic Slack pings for key dates and reminders

I'm no longer dragged into repetitive onboarding work whenever I sign someone new.

The time and mental space these automations provided completely transformed my bandwidth for doing more meaningful work.

I’ve said it once, and I will say it with my dying breath.

It’s all about moving up the ladder of leverage.

And this is a great way to do so.

By the way:

I wanted to take this time to ask all of you a question.

I’m going to be migrating my two email lists (this one) and my Gumroad email list. This is because I’m not a huge fan of the weekly emails anymore.

With this new list, I’ll be emailing 2 times per week… Maybe 3???

The point is it will be better, more personable, more actionable, and more insightful content for more people.

My question to you:

What can I do to make this transition as seamless as possible for you?

The bulk of the content and what I write about won’t change, but the frequency and style will. Hopefully, it will be a win-win for everyone :)

But that’s all I got for now.

Until next time,

Your friend, Hunter.

PS: Whenever you're ready, here are three ways I can help you:

  1. Want these automations built out for your business? Book a free discovery call with me 🙂 → ProfitPilot

  2. Dive deeper into the world of AI & systems with my FREE templates & ALL premium systems → Shop

  3. Get Rize 25% off for the first 3 months. It’s the productivity tracking software I use every single day.